


Dead Silence (The Clichéd Haunted House Story)

by lvcoloredmagic



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Alternate Universe - Human, Haunted Houses, M/M, POV Second Person, Past Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-10-14
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:41:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4841033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lvcoloredmagic/pseuds/lvcoloredmagic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dave Strider moves into a suspiciously cheap rental house in a small Texas town. There is absolutely nothing that could go wrong. Nothing at all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Perfectly Normal and Not Suspicious At All

**Author's Note:**

> Written because my good friend whittler_of_words says that all tropey clichéd haunted house ship fics have to have a sad ending. Suck it.

At sixteen years old, you probably shouldn’t be scouring the internet for available housing. Who does that shit at 16? Nobody, that’s who. And yet here you are, exploring the dark depths of Craigslist and whatever other shit you can find (read: newspapers) in order to find a place in this bodunk Texas town you’ve relocated yourself to after your Bro kicked you out. You just couldn’t take the city anymore, anyway. Too fucking hot, too fucking loud. At least out here you’ve escaped the microclimate of the city; heat makes you nervous, not that you’d admit it to anyone. 

You spend the nights in your car and the days in a library, and the people of this town are starting to get suspicious. You adamantly ignore them, and for the most part they return the favor, but nonetheless, if you don’t find a place soon, you’ll have to move on. You’re an emancipated minor, sure. But things back at home aren’t pretty, and you don’t want to take any risk of having to face that ever again. 

Things are just starting to look desperate when, surprise! A listing for an obscenely cheap, albeit old and empty, rental house pops up on a local site. The place has been empty for over a decade, but the landlord promises it’s livable and has a special starting price for the first year of rent. That should be more than enough to get you settled in and let you find a job. It’s honestly kind of perfect, and you’re wondering what the catch is even as you call up the number and talk to the landlord. 

“Of course the house is livable, I had renovations done right before putting it back up for rent. The inside is in need of some work, though. I could call a cleaning company to take care of it for you! But you’ll have to pay out of pocket. What do you say?”

“Thanks but no thanks, I’m not afraid of getting my hands dirty. I can take care of it.” In all honestly, you just can’t afford that shit. Whoops.

“Great, great! When will you be able to move in? I’d love to get the place inhabited as soon as possible, you know what being empty for too long does to a place.”

“Sure, I get it. I can move in like, right away. Seriously. As soon as you’ll let me.” Your back is in a constant state of soreness thanks to your uncomfortable as shit clown car. You can’t wait to sleep somewhere that you don’t have to distort yourself to fit in.

“Perfect! Son, you are doing me such a favor, you have no idea. If you can make the deposit today, you can move in first thing in the morning. Just write a check out to Jane Ashwood and I’ll get you in there.”

Is that the sound of angels singing? Or it just your back congratulating the fact that painful car naps are about to be a thing of the past?? You honestly don’t know. 

When you hang up, you practically run out of the library and to your car to get the check to her. You are so ready for tomorrow.  
You just hope nothing’s too wrong with the place. 

Yeah, you should probably look at it before the morning. You take a quick spin down the street and find it near the end of the neighborhood. The house is surrounded in thick, old trees, shading it from the bright Texas sun. Nice, points for that. The paint looks pretty old, but the place itself appears to be of reasonably sound structure. Not that you know shit about that, but whatever. The outside passes the Strider test. 

Now all you gotta do is survive one more night in your car, and you are ready. Suck it, Bro. You can totally make it on your own.


	2. Complete Bullshit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's hard to settle into a shitty old house when your mental health is roughly equivalent to the contents of a garbage can. It's hard, and you understand this far too well.

A week into living in your new home goes by fairly uneventfully. By which you mean the house creaks like a motherfucker and your shit is constantly ending up where you didn’t leave it. It doesn’t help that you’re jumpy as fuck, and you wonder if you’re finally just losing your goddamn mind. Fucking PTSD. You silently curse your mental health as you wake up for the thousandth time or so after another particularly loud sound from up in the attic of the house. You mind flashes through images of shitty horror movies, and you shake your head. Still, might be a burglar or something, must’ve seen you moving in and thought that you were so badass that he had to have your stuff. You grab your shitty katana and decide to go check it out.

You sneak over to where the attic door is located, and grab a chair to stand up on, being as quiet as possible so you can ambush any potential intruders. The sound of the attic door being pulled loose makes you freeze, but after a few seconds of silence, you continue on, climbing up the rickety ladder and peering up into the attic. You don’t see anything out of the ordinary? Just a whole lot of dust. 

Waitholyshitwhatwasthat?? You heard something from below you, and quickly hop down to see. Kanata at the ready, you tiptoe back into the kitchen only to find…

Only to find…………

Jack fucking shit. 

Groaning, you head back to bed, deciding it must just be your imagination playing really fucking rude tricks on you. You proceed to not sleep until about half an hour before your alarm goes off. Nice.

 

When your alarm goes off, you fumble around in the dark for a few seconds before finally slapping the clock so hard it falls off the table. Oh well, it’s dealt with worse from you. 

Time for another day of utter bullshit. 

Education is important, blah blah blah, you know. That’s why you’re enrolled, trying to get your high school degree so you have a snowball’s chance in Texas at finding a halfway decent job. But god damn if it’s not tedious or sometimes even downright painful to wake yourself up at the crack of Satan’s ass and drag yourself into a building full of chairs harder than a porn star’s dick and books that could potentially kill a small animal if dropped. 

And holy shit, the negotiating you had to do to get them to let you wear your shades indoors. You had to scrounge up a doctor’s note insisting that your eyes are hella photosensitive and that you need them. It’s only even half true. The other half is that you just can’t be seen without them. It’s part of your signature look. Showing up without your shades would be like showing up without your pants, or even worse.

You drag yourself through the day and suffer only a minor headache for your efforts. By the time you’ve gotten back home, you’re so ready for a nap, you have no idea. You collapse face first onto your bed, roll over, and yank a blanket over top of you. Good fucking night. 

You wake up about an hour and a half later and groan. You really shouldn’t sleep all day, but it’s just so tempting. Your pillow, how it beckons to you. 

Yeah okay you should probably go finish whatever crap’s sitting in your bag. You kinda need that degree. 

You find yourself sitting at the kitchen table in your shitty old house two hours later, squinting at the assigned reading. The words are going into your brain, but they are not making it back out through your pencil and helping you finish this summary. In fact, they’re not even making it to the comprehension stage. Setting the book down, you decide it’s time to do something more productive, like eating. 

You produce a cold piece of pizza out of the fridge (!!! you’re still not totally used to having control over the contents of a refrigerator) and stick it in the microwave for a bit. While you wait, you close your eyes, hoping for 30 seconds of rest. You don’t get it.

Is that… crying? Is that what you’re hearing?

You turn and peek out the kitchen window and find that there is no one in sight, crying or otherwise. Well okay then. It’s stopped, anyway, maybe the sound of the microwave was fucking you up. 

You pull out your pizza and are about to take a bite when you hear a muffled sob coming from an unknown source. What the fuck. Can’t a guy eat his pizza in peace?

You set the pizza down on a paper towel and sigh. Are you really this crazy? Is your brain really stopping you from eating a piece of fucking pizza by making you hear a kid crying somewhere? Maybe it’s a metaphor for your own tortured past or something. You’re hearing your past self crying through the corridors of time. Yeah, that’s gotta be it. 

You have a feeling it’s going to be a long night. Actually, scratch that. It’s gonna be a long year.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dave calls himself "crazy" because he honestly feels like it. He's been diagnosed with PTSD and feels ashamed of that fact, not to mention endlessly frustrated by it.


	3. 3 AM

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 3:47 AM isn't a great time to be awake.

You bolt upright, a layer of cold sweat covering your face, your heart pounding a staccato beat in your chest. It takes you several minutes to slow your breathing and get your mind back into a rational state. You fucking hate nightmares.

It’s almost always the same. Your bro calling you up on the roof, dancing around you unseen, taunting you until you try to strike. Punishing you for your weakness, leaving you covered in your own blood as it oozes from cuts you have no hope of preventing. You just wish you could forget! The only consolation you have for yourself is that, if the universe has any sense of mercy, will never see him again. He won’t be able to hurt you anymore.

You glance over at the alarm clock, and groan aloud. 3:47 AM. You’re not going to go back to sleep anytime soon, either. After fumbling for a few moments to find the lamp’s chain, you yank on it and wince in the sudden light. Ugh, where are your shades?

You sit up and peer around the room, and. Oh fuck no. There is someone in your bedroom watching you sleep, sitting crosslegged in your damn closet. You jump up, grabbing your katana and dropping into a fighting stance, when... they’re gone. The last thing you saw before they disappeared were wide, empty eyes. Fuck.

Well, that just guarantees that you're not sleeping again tonight. Time to hit the Internet and browse for some dank memes.

You hardly have a chance to log in and have Pesterchum load up when a ping makes you jump out of your skin. Who in the name of Satan's shiny red asshole is messaging you at this abhorrent hour?

TT: So nice to see you awake, Dave.  
TT: What brings you to this neck of the Web?  
TG: i should be asking you that same question  
TG: youre on the east coast youre an entire hour behind us over here  
TG: if you must know i had another nightmare ok  
TT: Your bro?  
TG: well yeah  
TT: You should consider seeing a professional about this. You have been suffering for so long, and it's quite unnecessary.  
TG: and have the government burst into my life and throw a big fit about his insistence on training a baby to swordfight  
TG: no thanks  
TT: I doubt any respectable psychologist would break their vow of patient confidentiality unless they felt it was a truly dire situation.  
TG: well have you considered that i just dont want to  
TG: i mean how the fuck would i even afford that shit  
TG: do you want me to sell my body on the streets to wealthy but lonesome men with secret homosexual urges  
TT: I never said that you would have to resort to prostitution. Many areas have free mental health services, you know.  
TG: fine ill think about it now will you stop nagging me  
TT: Alright, but only because you asked so politely.  
TG: yeah thanks  
TG: so rose  
TG: youre into the preternatural right  
TT: You could say that, yes. Why, do you wish to seek out psychic assistance with your problems?  
TG: hell no im just wondering about something  
TT: Go on.  
TG: what do you know about like  
TG: um  
TG: ghosts  
TT: Do you feel as though you are haunted, perhaps by the Freudian slips you tend to let loose whenever you see someone you are even remotely attracted to?  
TG: no i mean literal fucking ghosts  
TT: Ah.  
TT: My area of expertise lies in the field of cryptozoology, I'm afraid.  
TT: Perhaps Jade would be able to indulge you? Or John, with his sincere interest in ghosts and the busting thereof.  
TG: yeah maybe  
TG: thanks anyway yo  
TT: Any time.  
TT: Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must get back to this seance I'm performing. It's highly delicate work, you know.  
TG: wait what  
TT: I’m kidding. Goodnight, Dave.  
TG: alright night

You lean back in your chair, gazing up at the ceiling. She thinks you’re completely off your rocker, doesn’t she? You sigh and navigate over to a popular microblogging platform, prepared to do literally nothing of interest for the next several hours.

 

As promised, several hours pass uneventfully. In fact, you hardly remember them at all, likely because you spent the entire time physically struggling to keep your eyes open.

When your alarm clock goes off, you resign yourself to the day ahead, slumping downstairs with your eyes drooping behind your shades. It’s not until you’re staring at the toaster that something happens.

“Sorry.”

You whirl around, tensing up. A figure stands -- no, floats before you, frowning. They seem almost… translucent? Fuck, you should have gone back to sleep. This is just bullshit.

“Uh. About what?” Nice response. Full points, Dave.

“Last night.”

“Oh. Um. That was you in my closet, then. Nice, real creepy. Keep up the good work.”

The figure glares, and you realize that it’s not your tired eyes playing tricks on you. The floating boy in front of you is in fact slightly translucent. His blank white eyes seem fixed on you.

“So. You a ghost, then?” Might as well come right out and ask. You hope he doesn’t try to kill you.

“No, I just hang around being trapped in this fucking shithole for fun! Of course I’m a ghost, dumbass.”

“Nice. How’s that working for you?”

“It's unimaginably fucking terrible! Thanks for asking. Who the hell are you?”

“I should be asking you that.”

“This is my house.”

“No way, I’m paying rent for this shit, it’s mine now.”

The ghost pinches the bridge of his nose, as if fighting off a headache. “Look. I’ve been here longer than you’ve been crawling on the surface of this godforsaken planet. This was my house decades ago. But, whatever. I'm not going to bother you anymore, okay?"

“But what if I want to be bothered?” You’d wink if your eyes weren’t concealed by your shades. The ghost gives a shout of frustration and disappears. Heh. Only you have the ability to annoy a ghost away.

It's only when the ghost is gone that you realize that you maybe shouldn't have annoyed him. Well, time to pray the ghost doesn't kill you in your sleep.

All day at school you wonder what would have happened had you put in an actual effort to maintain the conversation with the ghost boy. After all, it’s probably a good idea to not infuriate the dead guy who’s haunting your new place? Just a thought. Well, too late now. That is, unless you decide to do a spooky ritual to talk to the ghost or something. Light up some candles, sit down with an Ouija board and get some real supernatural shit down in here. 

Actually… that’s so fucking stupid that it’s worth a shot. You make a mental note to stop by the store on your way home and pick up one of those things. The worst that could happen is that it’s just a waste of your money.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> blah i feel really nervous about this chapter? it doesn't feel up to par but whatever, here it is. 
> 
> since this is going to be relatively short, as evidenced by the short chapters (this is the first one that has exceeded 1000 words), i want to get this done by Halloween. we'll see what happens.
> 
> your kudos make me stronger. bless u all.


	4. Ouiji Boards

You’re sitting on the floor, flickering candlelight illuminating the flat board and its black printed letters in front of you. You felt pretty stupid at the store when the cashier scanned it, but now you feel, incredibly, even more ridiculous. 

You sigh, set your hands on the pointer, and close your eyes.

“Um. Hey, is anyone there?” Ah yes, this is exactly how one should talk to ghosts. Perfect.

You wait, but nothing happens. 

You throw your head back and sigh, a laugh almost reaching your lips. What did you expect? You’re really just losing it, aren’t you?

You sit there and gaze into a candle’s flame for a bit, unwilling to leave your little ghost talking setup just yet. Perhaps a part of you is still wanting to believe something will happen. 

After waiting a few more moments, you slowly go to stand up, your joints popping. This was a waste of time! 

You’re turning to walk away when a movement catches your attention, just at the corner of your eye. 

You spin around, and see-- well. You see a boy. The boy from before, slightly transparent and washed out looking, floating cross-legged above the Ouiji board. 

He gestures down at it. “What the hell were you doing?”

You blink before going into defensive snark mode. “Trying to summon the asshat that’s been sneaking around my house, and look. It worked.”

“Ugh, I knew this was a mistake-” He makes a movement as if to leave, but before he can do anything, you lunge forward and try to grab at his wrist. Your hand phases right through him. 

He squints at you, and you make a sheepish face.

“Um.”

“...”

“Let’s start over. Hey. I’m Dave.”

The ghost boy stares at you for several long seconds before looking down at the floor. “Karkat.”

“Cool, nice to meet ya. Soooo, you’re a ghost, eh?”

“Obviously.”

“Cool, cool. How’s that treating you?”

“Terrible, thanks.”

You wince. Maybe that wasn’t the best way to go about this. The silence hangs heavy in the air, and you clear your throat.

“So, was this your house or something?”

“Yeah, why else would I be fucking stuck here for all of eternity? Got my ass shot trying to be a brave hotshot, now I can never leave.”

“Do you, uh. Mind me staying here?”

He snorts. “Do you really think I can do anything to stop you? You’re not scared. You won’t leave like the others. You see a ghost and decide to try and fucking talk to it instead of running away like a normal person.”

“Do you want me to leave?”

He falls quiet, a contemplative look on his face. You watch him as he hovers in the air quietly. 

“Huh.”

“Huh?”

Karkat shakes his head. “Nothing. I don’t care, stay if you want. Like I said, there’s nothing I can do to kick you out, anyway.”

“So you can’t like, touch things?”

“If I get really upset or really determined I can move stuff around, but otherwise it’s impossible. I don’t technically exist, right? I’m just an echo of some asshole who lived here a couple decades back.”

You wonder if that’s really how it works, if that’s really what awaits everyone upon death: a fragment of consciousness tied forever to a physical location. 

Yikes.   
“So, uh. Want to watch TV or something?” You’re desperate to change the subject, and thankfully, he seems to get that.

“Sure. Haven’t done that in a while.”

You smile slightly and blow out the candles, closing the door behind you when you leave. Karkat doesn’t seem to be following, but when you get downstairs, you find that he’s already floating just above a chair. You grab the remote and flop down on the couch, leaning back and pressing the power button. The TV flickers to life, and you flip through the channels before settling on a cartoon. Something about rock aliens? You don’t get it, but your frequent glances over at Karkat reveal that he is, apparently, transfixed by the story. That’s good enough for you.

The silence between you as he watches the show is comfortable this time, and you suppose that it couldn’t be too bad. He looks about your age, must have been only 18 when he died, poor guy. It gets pretty lonely in here, so you’d probably both benefit from the company, even if you just have a ghost and he just has a fucked up kid. Better than nothing, right?

When the credits roll and you turn down the volume on the commercial that follows, Karkat looks over at you, a genuine smile on his face. “Hey,”

“What’s up?”

“You know those Ouiji board things are bullshit, right?”

You can’t help but laugh. “Worked, didn’t it? I got your ass to appear before me.”

He flips you off, but he looks happy.


End file.
